


Red

by Brighid



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 14:19:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5702779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What makes Rodney run?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> This is derived from the fairy tale "The Red Shoes".

There was a boy.

It begins as simply as that: there was a boy. He sat in the churchyard most afternoons when he was very small, making galaxies of stones and universes of his thoughts. When his hands were bigger, the curate talked to him of redemption, and the salvation found in hard work. He turned the boy's hands from stones to small, broken things, taught the boy to be busy and be purposeful.

He was a poor curate, in a poor parish. It was all he had to offer the boy.

When darkness would come he'd send the boy homeward, his head full of stones and strings and broken things, full enough so that the words of his father barely had room enough to crawl inside. 

Still, they did, and the boy's mouth twisted sidewise and the curate's fingers dug into the soft pages of his bible and they would sit in silence hoping to draw the poison out, but it went too deep.

As the years passed the curate kept giving him strings and machines and pieces of things and made the boy work. Best to be busy. Best to be brilliant. Best to be gone as soon as possible.

So when the boy came one day, hands still and uncertain and his blue gaze hazed with clouds the old priest gave him fifty dollars from the poorbox for bus fare, and a pair of red sneakers from the clothing drive, and told the boy to run.

He would die the next winter never knowing that he should have been clearer. Should have said "run _to_ to the boy, run _to_!" because the boy, he was running but he was running _away_ , and running away only broke the body and the soul and took one nowhere at all because there was never any good reason to stop.

 

Rodney's eyes were burning with fatigue and his gut was sour with coffee and bad food. He watched Major Carter being brilliant and competent and ... his fingers tightened, gripped the edges of the console until the knuckles were white.

He knew that technically he was her equal, every bit as competent as she, and perhaps even more so, but she had that one thing more that had always eluded him, that _spark_ of intuition and insight that made her take leaps he could not follow. 

She had _soul_. They listened to her because she had pulled the last minute miracle out of her ass so many times they'd come to count on it. They relied on her skill and her competence: those were their bedrock. But they worshipped her for the miracles. 

God, she was beautiful.

He really, really hated her for that, just a little.

 

One day a woman got out of a long dark car and she was lean and dark herself, with a soft, cool smile. "I have an offer to make you," she said, because that's how such things always began, with an offer.

She had a place for him, deep under the ice, but beneath the ice there was a promise of greater things: a star, an ocean, a spire. Many, many broken things.

She said he was the _only_ one, and he smiled at her, mouth slightly twisted, knowing that she lied. She wanted him, true enough, but whom had she wanted first?

Still. 

His feet twitched and the red shoes slid forward and he said ... yes. Because _there_ was not _here_ and here was still so close to before that even now he felt the sting of his father's hand hot against his skin.

So he said yes.

 

The lights were low, powered down for "night". Not that there was a true night down here, just the need for it built into human bodies.

Almost twenty years of coffee, eight years of post-grad and thirteen months in the ass end of nowhere had pretty much cured Rodney of that need.

So instead of sleeping he stood and watched the chair. Earlier today it had lit up like a Christmas tree for some goddamn pilot, some _idiot_ who'd just sat his ass down and made it purr and sing and spit out star maps for him and he'd not even given a damn.

Rodney had been delighted and destroyed by it all at once.

How could someone who didn't even care, while all he _did_ was care about the goddamn chair, make it work so effortlessly while for him it remained dead and silent?

He crossed over from the monitoring console and sat in the chair, pictured it humming and shifting beneath him, coming alive for him. He tried to visualize the universe that had spun over the stranger's head, but found himself seeing the stranger's face instead, the soft "o" of his surprised mouth, the wide hazel of his eyes.

He fell asleep thinking of regions unexplored.

 

The castle wasn't a castle, it was a city of broken things and he was its keeper. He found that he had to run day and night to keep it spinning, to keep the towers from tumbling into the waves. He was needed here, and he was busy here, and that was a good thing.

Busy was best. Brilliant was best.

He learned to be brilliant for them because he could be nothing less.

But at the end of the day his feet hurt; the shoes were tight and hot and he couldn't even pull them from his feet and in his dreams they kept moving still, because brilliance faded and what would happen if the city found that it didn't need him after all? 

So he went to bed later and he got up earlier and his feet bled with the running here and there but the shoes were red and so no one really noticed and it was so much better to be busy.

To be brilliant.

To be needed.

 

Rodney woke up and looked to his left and there were those hazel eyes, watching him. "What?"

John Sheppard shifted in his seat and smiled at him. It was a sideways smile, something he'd picked up from Rodney. "You're just really something else, you know that?" His tone was rough, almost affectionate.

"Well. I had the shield," Rodney said.

"You didn't know if the shield would do shit," John said.

"No. I guess that makes me a hero, doesn't it?" Rodney smiled at John. "A pretty big damn hero. Will I get extra coffee rations for that?"

John smiled at him. "You can have mine this week. I like tea better, anyway."

"Thank-you so very much, for your meaningless sacrifice in response to my heroism," Rodney said, still smiling. "Now go away. I'm tired."

"It's tiring, being a hero," John agreed. "So don't go making a habit of it."

"Whatever gave you the idea that I'd even consider that?" Rodney said.

"Hell if I know," John said. "I'll spring you in the morning, buy you breakfast. Then maybe you can show me how to overhaul the jumper. I figure if you're going to save everyone's ass now and again, I should learn the technical end of things, sort of even up the load."

"Go away, Major," Rodney said, because he really was tired. 

But he was still smiling when he fell asleep.

 

The dark soldier met him in the farthest hall and said, "You've reached the end and there are no more broken things." 

He stood there a moment, looking at the soldier, his body twanging like a plucked string, his gut churning. His feet twitched, and suddenly he leapt up, kicked the wall, breaking stones and circuits and he kicked the wall again and again until he felt each bone break in his foot, until he could feel the ankles shatter and then the shins and the knees.

The dark soldier knocked him down, held him down and drew his sword and it was hot-white lancing pain as it came down, cutting through skin, sinew and bone until his feet were hacked off and the shoes were running free and he could finally,

god, _finally_!

rest.

The soldier's gaze was gentle as he settled in beside him, as he touched his eyes and pulled their lids down. His fingertips were delicate, knowing. "It's safe to sleep. I will keep watch." The soldier's left hand drifted down from his eyes to the centre of his chest, warm and solid and sure. "I will be here when you wake."

So he slept deeply, for the first time since before he made galaxies of stones.

 

Rodney was in the guts of the chair, making all the connections work, swearing steadily. He'd been up three times to puke in the corner and his hands were shaking and his heart was out of step and he just ... god, he had to make this work because what if they came _back_ what if there were more and maybe the rest of them had time to sleep but god, he had to keep moving, he had to keep moving, he didn't want to dream the things already pressing up behind his eyeballs.

"Rodney," and he looked up to see John silhouetted in the door. "It's over, Rodney. C'mon, Beckett's frantic and you look like hell, if you don't mind me saying. Time to go drink a lot of water and take a shower and just ... lay yourself the hell down, okay?"

Which would have been a great deal more effective if he wasn't fairly certain that John was dead. With a bomb Rodney had built.

But John was as stubborn dead as he was alive and he came over and hauled Rodney up and said, "I'm not fucking dead, we went through this three hours ago, Rodney!" and Rodney just, god ...

his heart hurt, literally, metaphorically, and his head hurt and he thought he was going blind until John's thumbs swept up over his eyes, clearing them until they blurred again and he was saying something, saying, "Christ, Rodney, you stink!" and "C'mon, Rodney. It's okay. I'll keep everybody safe while you sleep, I promise," and "Aw, hell, Rodney!" and his mouth was wide and wet, it tasted warm and bittersweet and like ...

"You taste like orange juice!" he said accusingly, pulling away, and John laughed.

"Tang, from the Daedelus, no real citrus, I promise," and he kissed Rodney again and Rodney took a deep breath and just ...

went still.

For the first time in over twenty-five years he was motionless, lost in a kiss, his big brain stuttering to a full stop. The pressure in his chest eased and his heart slowed down to a shuddering, happy pulse and John said,

"Come on to bed, Rodney, okay?"

And it was. It was okay.

Rodney let John lead, and he followed.

 

End


End file.
